Joseph S. Diltz (b. 1833) was a farmer from Urbana, Champaign County, Ohio. The Diltz family came from Germany in the 1730s and settled in New Jersey, where Joseph S. Diltz’s grandfather, also named Joseph Diltz, was born in 1751 or 1752. The elder Diltz died in Champaign County, Ohio in 1824. Joseph S. Diltz’s father, Wilkinson Diltz, was born in Warren County, Ohio in 1808 and married Catherine Newell in Champaign County in 1830. Before the beginning of the Civil War, Wilkinson and Catherine Diltz moved to Iowa. Joseph S. Diltz enlisted in Co. I, 66th Ohio Infantry in December, 1861. After serving in Maryland and Virginia, the regiment was transferred to the western theatre in September 1863. Diltz was taken prisoner at Caperton’s Ferry, Alabama on March 29, 1864. He survived his imprisonment at Andersonville, Georgia and was paroled on February 15, 1865. At the time of the 1870 census, Joseph Diltz was living with his wife and children in Champaign County, where he died in 1910. Most of the letters in the collection were written by Joseph S. Diltz to his wife, Mary (Molly) Milledge Diltz (b. in Ohio ca. 1838), while he was serving in the army. There are also letters written by Mary Diltz, by her brother, George Milledge, and by her father, Sidney Milledge.